Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 100

by Aliette de Bodard

Aixelle thumbed her patient’s eyelid up, leaning in close to examine her handiwork. “Don’t be an idiot. I am betrothed to your uncle as part of the settlement between Brigante and Truro. A union of the Lagrange stations, to our mutual economic and social benefit.” She giggled, an unfolding of her stern character that Trieste found even further entrancing. “They’re already in a panic at Luna City.”

  “As well they should be,” Trieste muttered, all too conscious of the Biomistress’s sweet breath playing on her neck and face. Gouvernaile, she told herself, remember Gouvernaile. Her lifelong companion’s heart had been shredded by the flechettes—a double weapon, murderous in their direct effect as well as infectious with the Biomistress’s virus.

  The same virus that had almost killed her.

  Aixelle stroked Trieste’s cheek. “Another few watches in here, then you can present your credentials to my father, Stationmaster Angevine. There will be some days of the obligatory cocktail parties and media events. After that you may plan our escape.”

  Despite the blood that stood between them, Trieste’s heart was lost for good. She watched Aixelle leave the tiny clinic, taking all light and warmth with her.

  Trieste had tugged an exam stool up next to her sickbed. Her gear bag was open as she sorted through what had been so hastily packed back on Station Truro. It was an odd lot: a holo of her dead father, two of Gouvernaile’s study plans on a datacube, portions of her fighting gear—including the damaged combat knife. She turned it in her hand, careful to keep the reprogrammable molecular matrix of the blade set to the default non-conductive steel.

  The hatch hissed open. Aixelle stepped in. The Biomistress still kept her hair in mourning ribbons but had chosen to wear a brighter robe today. It only accented her beauty, which panged Trieste’s heart.

  She smiled as Aixelle stepped forward to take the knife from her hands. Trieste let the other woman have it, knowing she was as safe as she might be in this place. A damaged knife would not be the instrument of Trieste’s death should Stationmaster Angevine decide to do away with her.

  Aixelle turned the combat knife over in her hands. Some strange, complex expression flitted across her face. “Is this yours?” Her tone was casual but her voice trembled.

  “Yes.” Trieste flooded with pride. “I earned it in advanced combat training when I was fourteen.”

  “And did you break the tip? Or did someone break it for you?”

  Oh no. Trieste’s heart sank toward cold oblivion. Still, she could be nothing but honest with this woman. “I broke it.”

  Aixelle removed her pendant from her neck and matched the dull metal of ornament with the tip of Trieste’s knife. “I took this out of Morholt during our autopsy. He was like a brother to me. My great, good friend.”

  Trieste caught Aixelle’s eye and stared into the wounded heart of her beloved. “I am sorry for your pain but I cannot regret your loss.” Her words were like the blow of another knife, another slaying of love. But Trieste could not spare them. “Your great, good friend killed my own greatest friend during his invasion of Truro Station. He would have killed me too, had I not fought well.”

  The dancing water of Aixelle’s eyes froze to ice. She tapped the broken tip of the combat knife against Trieste’s neck, then pressed it until Trieste felt pain. Warm blood trickled down her chest. Aixelle held the pressure against her patient’s neck as Trieste waited unmoving to learn the Biomistress’s will. Out of love, Trieste refused to close her eyes.

  “Perhaps you should rest until your return to Truro Station,” Aixelle finally said. Putting away her chain with the bloody metal shard, she dropped Trieste’s knife on the deck, a fine spray of blood fanning away from it. “There are many accidents for the unlucky and unwell here on Brigante Station.”

  Listen up, you little datafreaks. Trieste and Aixelle aren’t no closer to kissing yet than when they first met. Trieste could be the greatest warrior of her age, and Aixelle’s got the beauty of an empress and all the powers of a Biomistress besides, but they’re acting like a couple of kids from the recycling yards. You think you’ve got crap to fight over? The life and death of thousands rested on these two.

  Branwen, Aixelle’s lab manager, stitched up another special virus with the help of Aixelle’s mother, she who had been Biomistress before Aixelle. This little bug kicked off a series of endorphin cascades linked to a targeted pheromone signature present in someone else infected with the same vector. What you might call a love potion. Branwen wanted to make life easier for Aixelle in her marriage to Stationmaster Marcus. Let them come together for politics but live for love.

  With families like this, who needs enemies?

  They shipped for home in Stationmaster Angevine’s personal shuttle, the Adsiltia. Trieste had not seen Aixelle in two weeks. She was trapped between stomach-wrenching nerves and icy regret. For all her youth, Trieste was not yet accustomed to such wild vacillations of the heart. She was placed aboard in advance by Brigante Station Security, then sat alone in the passenger compartment until Aixelle arrived accompanied by Branwen and two more security troopers—the Biomistress’s personal guard as allotted by the betrothal contract.

  Aixelle’s hair was loose again, waving free in the low gee of the shuttle. She wore a bodysuit of blue spidersilk, thin as air and twice as soft. She still wore the pendant made from the tip of Trieste’s combat knife. The troopers brought a small, heavy case with them. It was more than simple luggage.

  “Biomistress Aixelle,” said Trieste with a tight nod.

  “Citizen Trieste,” her beloved replied crisply, sweeping her hair over one shoulder to claim the crash couch farthest back from Trieste’s. Aixelle’s troopers secured their case at the back of the passenger cabin, then sat between Aixelle and Trieste. Branwen glanced at her mistress before she strapped in next to Trieste.

  Trieste felt a pain in her heart as cold and hard as a vacuum leak.

  Without announcement, the pilots undocked the shuttle for the forty-two hour transit from Brigante Station to Truro Station.

  “She’s torn,” Branwen whispered after a few hours. The woman didn’t turn her head to look at Trieste.

  The cabin was darkened for sleeping. Someone behind Trieste was using a holo—the blue glow flickered against the padded wall in front of her. She assumed it was Aixelle, as it was difficult to imagine either of the troopers going off into virtspace while Trieste herself was present in a confined area with them and their Biomistress.

  Hope flared in Trieste’s heart. “We all face difficulties,” she told Branwen.

  “There’s more here than meets the eye.”

  Despite herself Trieste’s curiosity was piqued. She didn’t know if she was being baited, however, so she kept her own counsel. “When is there not?”

  “The LaGrange Stationmasters plot against one another, but together they craft larger plots against Luna City and the groundside governments. Lately the affairs have turned yet again.”

  This smacked of Gouvernaile’s lessons. “Like Greeks and Trojans, endlessly warring.”

  Branwen was silent for while. Eventually, Trieste heard the faint smack of her lips parting as she spoke again. “Did you wonder what Morholt was doing on Truro Station?”

  “Yes. Just before I killed him he said I was not his target. Yet he slew my tutor.”

  “Cleone Station transferred technology to Truro Station. Your tutor was the carrier. Your trip into exile was cover. Morholt was after that tech on behalf of Brigante.”

  “My step-mother tried to have me—” Trieste stopped.

  Branwen’s laugh was soft. “She didn’t succeed, did she?”

  Trieste thought furiously. Love and betrayal were the stuff of stories, not her life. When had it become so complicated? “Why tell me this now?”

  “Mistakes are being made as we talk,” Branwen said. “Alliances shifting, both among the stations and with respect to larger players. You and Aixelle can perhaps see a clear course to the end. You are not so caught up in prio
r generations of cis-Lunar politics.” She took Trieste’s hand for a moment, then Trieste felt a prickle on her palm.

  “Hey—” Trieste started to say, but Branwen covered her mouth with a hand.

  “You will thank me for this,” the other woman said. She then unbuckled from her seat and moved back through the dark cabin. Trieste stared at her hand, touching the faint spot of fading pain where Branwen had infected her with . . . what?

  Hope, perhaps.

  Trieste awoke with a start, briefly disoriented and scrabbling for her weapons. She remembered where she was. Then she realized that Aixelle’s fingers enclosed hers. The cabin lights were still dimmed. The Biomistress leaned close to Trieste, her long hair brushing Trieste’s cheek and arm, her shadowed bluewater eyes gleaming like Luna’s darkside sky.

  “Trieste,” Aixelle said softly, “I have wronged you.”

  The warmth of Aixelle’s breath upon Trieste’s face, the cool pressure of her fingers, the soft brush of her hair, through all of these things Aixelle drew them together. It was if Trieste dove into the pools of her eyes, flew into the cloud of her hair, landed in the bays of her heart. She scarcely dared speak, for fear of shattering the moment, but she felt she must. “It is no matter, my lady.”

  “There are pressures upon both our peoples.” One hand stroked Trieste’s face, tracing the line of her lips. “I let my own troubles lead me into harsh judgment.” Aixelle sighed. “No. Misjudgment.”

  Trieste’s entire body coiled tight. Her breasts ached to be touched and her groin flooded with warmth. Beaded sweat caused her neck to itch. She was too close to her heart’s desire. “My lady Biomistress, you are betrothed to my uncle, Stationmaster Marcus.”

  Aixelle leaned forward and they kissed. All thoughts of family and duty fled Trieste’s head like oxygen from a breached cylinder.

  There was only Aixelle.

  See, I told you there would be a kiss. What did it mean the first time you kissed someone? Did the fate of stations rest on your fidelity? Were you selling out your family and your home? Not to mention a hot tech transfer.

  Did you ever think our whole existence was built on a single kiss? There’s more to it. But it was a kiss that started it all.

  The wedding had been riotous. Stationmaster Marcus held it in maintenance bay “A”—the largest open cubage in Truro Station—under microgravity. Trieste stared as Marcus led Aixelle away through the crowds rotating around the happy couple in a constellation of intoxicated goodwill. Her angry jealously raised goose pimples on her arms as her knife hand shivered.

  “Fear not, my lady,” whispered Branwen, approaching Trieste’s elbow through a cloud of confetti. “Your love will be upheld.”

  “I thank you for the good will, Mistress Branwen,” said Trieste, “but that can never be.” She reached for what was right. “I cannot give loyal service to my uncle and my heart to my beloved in the same breath.”

  Branwen’s lips brushed Trieste’s earlobe, breath hot in her ear. “We all wear masks, beloved.”

  Startled, Trieste whirled. She knocked herself into a slow rotation from which Branwen steadied her. Or was it Branwen? Trieste studied the other woman’s face. The line of her cheekbones, the set of her chin, somehow it was all familiar. “Aixelle,” Trieste finally said, “ . . . but how?”

  Her beloved smiled. Radiant glory piercing Trieste’s heart. “To a Biomistress many things are possible. Pheromones, the shift of muscles in response to pinpoint injections of toxins. Humans are easy to fool. Our little tricks do not work so well for machine recognition systems. But in the drunken dark, well, Stationmaster Marcus will find my Branwen much to his taste.”

  “And what will I find?” Trieste asked.

  “Catch me and see,” Aixelle laughed, kicking away to spin into a cloud of confetti.

  Shouting, Trieste dove after her.

  Days later they tumbled in orbit in a slice of time stolen from marriage and duty, crowded close together into one of Truro Station’s vacuum hoppers. Aixelle grinned up at Trieste from where she knelt before a series of linked titanium boxes. Electrostatic clingpads kept the Biomistress secured to the floor. A two-meter long pole bulgy with electronics lay beside the boxes. It all had the look of a prototype—taped-off electrical leads, data antennae soldered in odd places, ragged edges to the milling of the metal.

  “What is that?” Trieste clung to her crash couch to keep herself from floating away in the microgravity.

  “Watch and see.”

  The little vacuum hoppers were used for exterior maintenance, chasing down lost loads—or spacewalkers. All in all, general duties that required limited duration excursions. Every eighty seconds with the period of their rotation the station glinted perhaps a hundred kilometers from them in the main viewport of the tiny pressurized cabin. Data ghosts across the viewport glazing charted distances, vectors, dynamically scaled energy budgets.

  “I’m watching,” said Trieste, “but what am I seeing?”

  “This.” Aixelle flipped a switch.

  Suddenly they were in full gravity. Trieste was jammed against one side of the crash couch as if the vacuum hopper were pulling a tight turn. Aixelle slumped against the floor smiling.

  “God in Orbit,” Trieste said, savoring the sensation. “Artificial gravity.”

  “What Gouvernaile was working on. Along with some of Marcus’s people, in competition with Brigante’s teams.” Aixelle frowned. “What Morholt was sent to take before father and Marcus came to their senses and joined forces. I brought the last critical systems from Brigante Station’s own lines of research with me to the wedding. Bride gift.”

  Of course, thought Trieste. The precious case the guards had carried. “The stations will control the solar system,” she said. Political strategies unfolded in her head like an inflating pressure suit. “Luna and the dirtside interests will be left behind forever if this can be delivered significantly ahead of their efforts. How close is the competitive research?”

  Aixelle shrugged. “We’ve gotten it first. This is everything . . . a weapon, a mode of travel, freedom to have children and grow old in orbit without bone loss and muscle atrophy.”

  Trieste gathered Aixelle into her arms, both of them leaning against the slightly out-of-true plane of artificial gravity. They shared a crushing kiss that sent shocks rippling down Trieste’s body. Fingers reaching for each other’s stationsuit closures, they bent to yet celebration of love and life.

  Trieste woke to microgravity. She was loosely strapped into her crash couch. Aixelle must have turned off the generator. She scratched her head, then reached for her beloved while blinking sandy sleep away. Her hand found metal and plastic.

  A pressure suit helmet.

  “Aixelle?” Trieste coiled herself to spring into action.

  Aixelle still slept, the vacuum hopper still tumbled, but there was a pressure suit helmet wedged between their seats.

  “STATIONMASTER, TRURO” was stenciled above the faceplate.

  It was Marcus’s helmet. Trieste’s uncle had been here. Found them. Discovered Aixelle’s betrayal.

  How had that happened?

  Trieste stabbed at the console until the little ship’s log came up. The Stationmaster’s personal vacuum hopper had docked on executive override, silencing all of Trieste’s alarms. The log didn’t say, but Trieste guessed Marcus had gassed their atmosphere, too. How else could she have slept through the docking?

  Trieste glanced behind her. Aixelle’s artificial gravity units were still in place. Marcus had left them with all choices. All the betrayals lay in their hands. Trieste dug her knuckles into her eyes and wept a moment before turning to her own pressure suit racked by the airlock.

  She could stay no more on Truro Station. Brigante was closed to her too, and Cleone as well. Trieste clipped a lock of Aixelle’s glorious hair and placed it next to her heart before sealing the pressure suit. She overrode the airlock alarms so that her beloved would sleep a little longer and left the secret of
artificial gravity behind her. Trieste stepped out into an exile of the heart.

  So what would you have done if you was her, spacebrain? Follow Trieste into vacuum? How much air you think that girl had on one little p-suit? Death by screw-up is more like it, to go for a long walk with short air.

  You know the stories. The First Gravity War. The Second Gravity War. The Last Gravity War. What the Americans did to Cleone Station. What the other Stations did to Washington City in return. Where was Trieste in all this? Is she a hero in your bookstories?

  Didn’t think so.

  She got lucky, picked up by a ballistic hauler with a load of low-orbit wheat heading upward. Stupid git walked away from all the love and power in cis-Lunar space, changed her name to Diana and worked her way back to power in Luna City. Eventually she made general officer in their militia. She gamed the wars to make sure the Stations never lost too hard, and won when it counted. Even against her own side. She knew how to kick butt and take names, remember? Eventually Diana threw Luna City in with the Stations against Earth in The Last Gravity War. Then she married Prince Hektair of Luna City to seal the bargain.

  Yeah, that Diana. Signed the Peace of Amsterdam on behalf of the Lunar governments, established the perpetual independence of trans-Lunar space. That would be us, kiddies, out here chasing rocks in the dark orbits between Mars and Jupiter, ice-diving around Saturn, all the other mischief our siblings and cousins get up to.

  And it was all for a kiss. Trieste wouldn’t have gone into exile, undermined the Lunatics and defeated the Terrans if she’d just kept her lips off that girl Aixelle and stayed home on Truro Station like a good princess.

  What happened to Diana after Amsterdam? Been doing research, ain’t you? Reached a dead end or twelve I expect. Just says she died, don’t it? There’s some stories don’t get written down, only passed from mouth to ear.

  Listen up one more time, my pretty pets.

  Diana, General-Governor of Luna City, greatest warrior of her age, was brought before her Prince-Consort Hektair in his bubble garden high up on the wall of Aristarchus Crater. He sat beneath the dome staring at the diamond stars, surrounded by the slow breathing of his plants. Quiet servants set the brakes on Diana’s gurney and withdrew. She stared at Hektair’s age-stubbled scalp through her oxygen mask and the needled haze of pain.